DATE: Wednesday, June 4, 1997               TAG: 9706040678

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Bob Molinaro 

                                            LENGTH:   61 lines

HYPOCRITES REPLACE BOOS WITH ALL-STAR VOTES FOR ALOMAR

Remember when denouncing Roberto Alomar was the national pastime? It hasn't been that long ago.

When the Baltimore Orioles second baseman showered umpire John Hirschbeck with spittle late last summer, he lost almost every fan he ever had and made enemies of people who didn't know a fungo bat from a fungicide.

Alomar was the scoundrel who brought the country together. He made it possible for Rush Limbaugh and Bill Clinton to meet on common ground. This Alomar, they agreed, was a disgrace.

He was worse than a disgrace. He was Public Enemy No. 1. Decent Americans loathed him like they hated O.J. Simpson. Alomar was more contemptible than the Olympic Park bomber, more irksome than the capital gains tax.

God-fearing, wholesome, All-American fans would not easily forgive Alomar. How could they? He soiled baseball's reputation. For that, he deserved to suffer for the rest of his life.

But wait. Just a moment, please.

We interrupt this media-driven, slightly hysterical, rant to bring you a dose of reality: Roberto Alomar, the enemy of decent people, leads American League second basemen in the All-Star fan balloting.

Alomar, the most booed player in memory, has received 463,862 votes at last count, more than twice as many as runner-up second-baseman Chuck Knoblauch, who has never, to anyone's knowledge, moistened an umpire.

What's more, Alomar is the American League's fourth-highest vote getter, trailing only Ken Griffey Jr., Cal Ripken Jr., and Alex Rodriguez, easily three of the shining lights in all of baseball.

Rodriguez, the Seattle Mariners young shortstop, is the most likeable star to come along in years. He is a stranger to bad publicity. What's more, he is enjoying a much better season at the plate than Alomar. Still, Rodriguez leads Alomar by only 1,061 votes.

So much for Alomar's villainous image. Maybe it's still unpopular to admit out loud that you don't hate Roberto Alomar. But even taking into account ballot-box stuffing at Oriole Park, it appears that thousands of polite, well-mannered people secretly like the guy. Who would have guessed?

So, then, are Americans hypocrites? Perhaps.

But more likely, this is just another case of newspapers, TV and radio going off the deep end in portraying popular outrage. The All-Star balloting would seem to expose Alomar bashing for what it was: media obsession.

Once the propaganda machinery began rolling, it became the duty of writers and broadcasters to point the bony finger of indignation Alomar's way. Each tried to outdo the other.

Meanwhile, I suspect most people, blessed with a better sense of humor and perspective than most members of the media, got over the incident in a relatively short time.

A sense of humor certainly helps in assessing Major League Baseball's moral dilemmas. For using a corked bat, Dodgers' rookie Wilton Guerrero, another second baseman, was just suspended for eight games. And what was Alomar's penalty - delayed until this season over howls of protest - for spitting on an umpire? That's right, five games.

Like this season's All-Star balloting, baseball's math doesn't always add up.

What, you might ask yourself, would a player have to do to be docked 13 games? Spit cork into an umpire's face?

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